Medorem Crawford - Oregon

Oregon

Crawford crossed the Great Plains with the Elijah White wagon train and arrived in the Willamette Valley in late 1842. He first settled in Salem where he taught at the Methodist Mission’s school for nine months. In 1843, he married Adalene Brown, whom he met on the trip to Oregon. They had five children; Medorem, Jr., Mary, Henrietta, John, and Frederick. Medorem, Jr. was the first white American male born on the west side of the Willamette River when delivered in January 1844.

Also in 1843 he bought part of James A. O'Neil’s land claim at Wheatland downriver from Salem. The Crawford family remained on the farm there until the fall of the next year. Crawford moved to Oregon City in April 1845 where he worked portaging goods around Willamette Falls for seven years. He moved to a farm on Joe McLoughlin’s old land claim at the mouth of the Yamhill River in 1852 and filed and received a Donation Land Claim on the property. Crawford retained his farm near Dayton in Yamhill County until his death.

In 1861, he returned to New York to visit his father, and on his way back to Oregon was pressed into service by the United States Army to assist Captain William Murray Maynadier in escorting emigrants to Oregon over the Oregon Trail. Crawford returned to the east in 1862 and received a commission from President Abraham Lincoln of captain. Assigned as an assistant quartermaster, he organized a 100 man unit under orders to protect emigrants over the Great Plains. Upon completion of the task that year, the unit disbanded in October at Walla Walla in the Washington Territory. Crawford did this one final time in 1863.

Crawford resigned from the Army after the last escort and received appointment by the President as collector of internal revenue for Oregon. He served in that office from 1864 until 1869. President Ulysses S. Grant appointed him as Portland’s appraiser of merchandise in 1871, where he remained until 1876.